Charity Partner Story: The Africa Trust

A series in which we share the inspiring work and projects of our charity partners and stories on how we’ve proudly supported them over the years. This edition focuses on The Africa Trust and their clean water campaign…

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Today, we’re journeying to Africa to share the story of the Africa Trust, a charitable organisation founded in 2010 by Ian Thorpe, the founder of Pump Aid and the creator of the Elephant Pump, and Paul Searle the Managing Director of AquAid.

This life-changing organisation is dedicated to providing sustainable solutions to poverty across Africa. From Malawi to Mozambique, the Africa Trust works to provide communities with clean water with the help of Elephant Pumps.

Based on an ancient Chinese technology for lifting water adapted for modern-day use by Ian Thorpe, the Elephant Pump is an inexpensive water pump built using locally available materials – over 5000 of these have already been built throughout Zimbabwe, Malawi and Uganda.

A beautifully simple piece of technology, the Elephant Pump’s use of local and natural resources means that communities are able to build and repair their own pumps, keeping costs roughly 60% cheaper than comparable alternatives and giving the power to create and sustain positive changes back to the communities they affect.

Inspired by how much good this simple invention could do, we set up a link with the Africa Trust and made a donation of £5000 towards a collection of brand new water pumps. Time passed and a total of 20 pumps were built, providing clean water for people that had suffered as a result of not having access to it before.

Today, over 40 new pumps are installed every month in Zimbabwe alone, with almost 1.5 million people now able to use clean, safe water on a daily basis.

We’re proud to support the Africa Trust and hope that the Elephant Pumps built using our donation continue to improve the everyday lives of people living in towns and villages across Africa for many years to come.